Skip to main content

Update



Hi there blog readers - it’s been far too long! I’ve been busy editing my novel - and with writing the screenplay of BELFAST GIRLS. Hope to have good news to report on both fronts soon. I’ve also just had a short-ish play on in London (at the Southwark Playhouse) called TUSSY, about the life of Eleanor Marx. This received some lovely reviews and I am currently researching the subject further so as to create a full-length play (and possibly a screenplay, too). Michael Davis of Female Arts Magazine said of the Southwark show ‘…my favourite play opened the second half of the evening...Tussy by Jaki McCarrick (directed by Sharon Willems)…I would love to see a full-length version of this play.’


I had a wonderful cast for this piece too, with Jess Murphy (with whom I’d worked at the National when I was on attachment in 2012) resoundingly brilliant as Eleanor Marx and Mike Corsale excellent as the British Trade Unionist, Will Thorne. I can’t wait to create the full-length version.

Earlier in the year there was a wonderful reading of my first play, The Mushroom Pickers, at RADA as part of the 'Women at RADA' series. This was directed by the fantastic Tilly Vosburgh and starred Rose O’Loughlin and Keith Dunphy. I really must adapt this play as a screenplay as it’s so cinematic. It was lovely to see those characters again.

Later in the year I will be spending some time at Tin Jug Studios in Birr as their Writer-in-Residence. I’ve never been to Birr so I’m really looking forward to that. I am aiming to complete my second short story collection there – Night of The Frogs. The title story will appear in Canada’s Fiddlehead magazine later this year. 
Other projects in the pipeline are – apart from a heap of book reviews, an article I’ve to research, and a couple of appearances at festivals this year – a September gig for my band Choice (will keep you posted on that one) and hopefully a new anthology of my shorter plays.

I’ve also got some poetry in the forthcoming anthology of the best of the Cork Literary Review, edited by Kathy D’Arcy.

Meanwhile, my brother Roger is recovering very well from his recent heart transplant in California. He has been an absolute model patient in that his test results are consistently good, he does his exercise, has mastered a complex schedule of medication and has a great mental attitude. Thanks to all those who contributed to the recent #IHeartRogerMcCarrick campaign. Please like the page on Facebook and on Twitter at @rogermccarrick1


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Folly

  A new poem from me in response to the proposal to build on 98 acres of land surrounding Cuchulainn's Castle, Dundalk. It is written from the point of view of Laeg, Cuchulainn's companion and charioteer. The Folly   Out from Tara, the widest road leads to a mount from where the sea can be seen beneath Mournes and Cooleys, at the edge of Ulster. This is Delga.   Cú is needed for a battle today. Something about a bull and a mad queen from the West – who it seems is a friend of Ferdia. Láeg is here to deliver this troubling news.   He sits in the centre of the mount, waiting for Cú to come from his shave and wash, thinks about which horses to take, for one is lame, when he is possessed by a strange fit.   It is so black and dense, he thinks even a warp-spasm, the Ríastrad, could not unloose it. He sees the future: a conquest that causes his people to hide in the earth like moles, the building of a fortress around this place.   The image burns in his mind the...
8 comments
Read more

Sweeney as a Girl: New Poetry Collection

My debut collection of poems, "Sweeney as a Girl", was published last year by Dedalus Press. Due to a cycling accident, in which I managed to break my wrist, I have really only been able to promote the collection more recently. I read at the Cork International Poetry Fesival last year and have just read at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, both great events. Now fully recovered and lifting weights (thank God!) I am hoping to read in the UK later this year, too. While the book is a "debut collection", it includes work written over the past decade or so, and includes a few poems that have won awards or were shortlisted or nominated for them.  The medieval Irish myth Bhuile Suibhne, about Suibhne mac Colmáin, king of the Dál nAraidi, or King Sweeney, who was banished and changed into a bird then travelled all over Ireland, has inspired many writers, from Flann O’Brien to Seamus Heaney. The story begins in County Down and in Heaney’s  Sweeney Astray  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belfast Girls tours Ireland!

Since I last posted here about my play Belfast Girls, it has been staged in Germany, in New York twice, in Australia again and in Ireland! It returned to Ireland this Autumn and is currently touring. Presented again by Quintessance Theate, the play has a new cast and a new director in Rhiann Jeffrey. It is also a different production, and seems ready-made for its need now to be a portable, touring entity. The play previewed in Drogheda last week and is currently on in An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny. I will get to see it a few times during its 24-show tour and I'm looking forward to it. There are a few production shots of the Irish show below. Some of the reviews the play received in New York were wonderful. Such as: "Skillfully structured ... Five wonderful actors" New Yorker ★★★★ Front Row ★★★★ NY Stage Review ★★★★ Total Theater "One of the most ... considered portraits of the harm Ireland has done to women ... that I have ever seen" Irish Central ...
Post a Comment
Read more